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7″ Augen GENTOUCH Android Tablet for $149.99

Kmart is advertising a Google Android OS 7″ Tablet from Augen which I have never heard of before. It’s called the GENTOUCH and is selling at Kmart for $149.99. There is very little information about this tablet as the Augen website does not have any info about it nor does the Kmart website. There are no specs listed and it is also not know which version of the Android OS this is running.

I’d really like to know if anyone has information about this because at a price of only $149.99, it might be a neat little toy to get just to be able to mess around with android and not have to buy an Android phone. According to the ad, the device is wifi enabled.

I may make a run to Kmart this week just to see what the GENTOUCH looks like in person and what the real specs and OS version are.

UPDATE: (Thanks Roebeet)

Augen has just updated their website with detailed information about the GENTOUCH 78. There is not a spec sheet along with some of the features of the GENTOUCH 78.

Product Features:

800×480 color TFT touch panel screen

CPU: 800 Mhz

Ram: DDR2 256mb

Internal Memory: 2GB

Expansion Slots: SD/MMC card slot up to 16GB

Wi-Fi Connectivity with Full Web Browsing Capability

Supports Ebook Formats: Text, PDF, E-PUB, HTML

Supports Media Formats: MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC

Supports most popular E-Book formats

Picture Viewer in JPEG, BMP

Video Player

Rechargeable Lithium Battery

Carrying case included

Accessories Included:

Leather Carrying Case

USB Cable (for data transfers only)

UL Certified AC Adapter

Now that we have more information about it, would you still get it? For $149.99, I don’t think its a bad deal whatsoever. The specs aren’t as impressive as the iPad or even the newest Android mobile phones, but what you get for $149.99 seems to be a decent tablet that is able to view websites, email, video, ebooks, pictures and be able to access the Android Marketplace. Also what’s great is that the device already include Android 2.1 which is a step ahead of most of these generic style Android tablets that only have 1.6 installed.

As you may have read i n the comments however. Kmart might not even have these in stock yet even though it is advertised in this week’s ad. I would either call ahead first so you don’t waste a trip.

16 thoughts on “7″ Augen GENTOUCH Android Tablet for $149.99”

Good luck finding it. I went to my local KMart and their comment was “Never seen this before, it’s too new. We advertized before it was even available…”. Tried calling a couple of other stores and same thing… “nope, don’t have it, never seen it…”

I was fortunate to find one at our Kmart. I’m really stumbling though–trying to auto rotate orientation and can’t find the option. Hard to scroll on display. If anyone locates how to on this please advise. Thanks.

I picked on up yesterday. Not bad for the price. Once hooked up WIFI it began to download all sorts of apps. Do not know why? Then when I asked it to download two apps that I wanted, it seemed to freeze. Not sure built in speaker really works.

@Ravel1: There isn’t any auto-rotate. The Gentouch 78 is not equipped with accelerometers. It can’t detect that you’re rotating the device. Landscape is the only option, short of finding an app that will manually rotate the screen.

From what I’ve been reading, the screen is resistive, which accounts for the scrolling being a bit less responsive than an iPad. I saw a video review that put the iPad and Gentouch side by side. You could see that the Gentouch was harder to scroll. On the flip side, it’s one-third of the cost and, truthfully, it didn’t look all that much harder to scroll than my Droid generally behaves.

The video playback appeared to be good, though the quality of the speakers was indeterminate from the video. I imagine that if you cared about that, you’d plug in a pair of powered computer speakers.

Interestingly, there’s a slot on the case that’s labled for HDMI output, but there’s no actual socket. I don’t have the link handy to the video review,but it’s easy enough to google it.